Now, with the recent claimants of people living without food and water, it has become very necessary to examine the issues that have been raised and particularly the methods used to verify the claims of these people. There is this man from Kerala who claims to have extracted energy from the sun by staring at it and converting it into the energy needed to keep his bodily processes going on. There is this man from Gujarat who claims to have been blessed by a goddess who pours something down his throat, and hence he does not need any food or water. He also claims to have lived for seven decades without these!

These recent reports have provided the much-needed threads to cling to for the Hindutvawadi gang. Their illusions have been recently dashed by scandal after scandal, and they had been in desperate search for new icons, which have been provided by these new idols proclaiming that they can live without food and water. It is not that these claims are new! We have been hearing of these since time immemorial, like the ancient sages living on air for thousands of years and such. But till today, we have not seen one! Those who are around make desperate attempts to hide their age by dyeing their hirsute appendages and wearing wigs to hide their bald patches! We have the sterling examples of the contortionist, the pilot-turned-Baba, the Afro-wigged Puttaparthi guy, and innumerable such examples. The squeaky-voiced patenter of breathing has a few carefully preserved strands of gray in his mane and beard!

Let us take a look at why one cannot live without food and/or convert solar energy to meet the energy requirement of the body. There is no method by which solar energy can be converted into carbohydrates in animals, and that is why we are dependent on the solar energy converted into carbohydrates by plants and organisms which can do that. Those which do that have to have a pigment that can trap solar energy, and that is chlorophyll. None of the people who have these claims have any green color, and obviously do not have that! Even assuming that they have it, they would have to spend all their day in the sunlight to conserve enough energy for the dark hours! How does one store that? The most efficient form for storage of energy is fat, which can yield an energy of 9 kcal/gram. Assuming a minimum energy need of at least 50 kcal/hour, for the dark hours one needs 600 kilocalories of energy, which would need the storage of at least 65 grams of fat between the sunlight and dark hours! There is no known metabolic process which can convert sunlight into that in any animal! Again, the process of converting sunlight into any form of energy-containing compound is a very long process and requires a lot of surface area and exposure to sunlight. None of these people can show any prolonged exposure to sunlight.

The body would also need to convert atmospheric nitrogen into protein for the build-up and repair of tissues which break down, and nitrogen fixation is a very energy-dependent process. That is why all animals depend on nitrogen-containing compounds derived from dietary sources. Again, minerals, vitamins, and so many other compounds have to come from the diet and diet alone. To say that the human body can run without any of these is like saying a car can be run without any petrol, lubricants, coolant, and engine oil. Anyone who has a modicum of common sense will understand that it is not possible to do that! If one claims that the stored energy in the body can serve as the source of energy, the stored energy will have to come from fat, and for a person who claims to have lived for several decades without any food, it is impossible to have any stored fat which can meet their energy needs.

It is obvious that the people making these claims of living without food and water are charlatans, and the investigators are either hand in glove with them or are so gullible that they are not making proper efforts to investigate. There are many reports of investigating the claims of the Breatharians. While we have the Breatharians in the West, we have the Solarians and the Yogarians here. While their Western counterparts have claims of surviving on air, our home-grown ones have the omnipresent sun god to fall back upon or the mysterious, magical mental powers of the East—yoga! There are claims of yogis thousands of years old with mind-over-matter powers. But the only thing is that they are not condescending to come out of their mysterious abodes in the remote regions of the Himalayas! A few of them who do come out get corrupted by the materialistic world and pass away like normal people like us!

Let us try to understand why the so-called investigators are a gullible lot. Firstly, they are overawed by the claims of these so-called yogis and look upon them with reverence. They dare not question them or watch them closely. About 6 years ago, I was told about one such yogi who had lived for 60 days underground without food, water, and air. When I proposed that we get him tested, the informant told me that he could arrange for an interview with him. When I told him that I, who had spent 90 days without food, air, and water, did not need to interview such a person, he told me that I should do that and prove it to him. I informed him that he could interview me! He was furious at that. Then I had to tell him that the same standards which are applied to his guru should be applicable to me too. Then I asked him whether his guru’s heart was functioning. He said yes. Then I told him that I could stop mine at will. I told him to check my pulse and heartbeat, and he assured me that they were normal. Then I went into a “yogic trance,” before which I asked him to check my heartbeat and pulse after 30 seconds. He did that and announced that they had stopped! After that, I opened my eyes and asked him to check them again. He said they were restored. He asked me how I did that, and I told him that my yoga was greater than his guru’s. He had no reply! A few years later, I repeated the same trick for a serial called *Medicine’s Mysteries* filmed by BBC Channel 4. This time, I had to take off my shirt and was examined by two doctors who were specialists in tropical medicine, and they too were surprised.

There was such a scam which happened in Karnataka many years ago. There was a teenager who was supposedly living without consuming any food. That was reported in the press, and a cutting was sent by someone to the then Prime Minister of India, who asked the Government of Karnataka to investigate the same. Those were the days of food shortages, and Nehru wanted this technique to be studied. The girl was admitted to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences at Bangalore and kept under close observation. For a fortnight she was observed, and she was not eating anything! She was drinking water only. There was no fall in her weight, and it looked like she could live without affecting her health without consuming any food! Her mother was staying with her and bringing a container of food. When queried, she said that it was her food and her daughter was not eating anything, and she was under close observation. Those were the days when there were no CCTV cameras and only humans could keep watch! She was under observation 24 hours of the day. The doctors were amazed. There was no apparent explanation for that! But it was observed later that the girl’s mother would hide food behind the ventilator in the toilet! The “fasting” girl would go to the toilet, eat fast, and had not been caught because no one expects that someone would eat in the toilet of all places! So, the secret was out. The secrets of all these people who claim to survive without food will be out if properly investigated.

How can people fast for long periods without suffering from problems? When one does not consume any food, the nutritional needs of the body are met by the ketone bodies formed in the liver from the free fatty acids mobilised from the adipose tissue. These are also excreted in the urine, and one loses salt along with them. So, experienced fasters take measures to see that the depletion of salt does not take place. Thus, they take care to see that plenty of liquids are consumed, along with salt. The seasoned veteran of fasts, Gandhi, used to do that. During his fasting, he used to drink plenty of water with salt and lemon juice added. That could take care of the immediate problems that could arise for the first few days due to fasting. Longer fasts could cause more complications, and failing health would ensure early negotiations to stop them.

So, what could be the reasons for such claims? The obvious one would be name and fame for the claimant. What is more covert is the publicity for the alleged investigators and the secret agenda of the Hindutva brigade—our ancients had wonderful knowledge by which they could do things which the decadent West could not even dream of! The claims of NASA, DRDO, etc., are all aimed at that. We don’t need all these agencies to investigate these claims; just hand over the claimant to us and give us a free hand to investigate, and the truth will be out in a week’s time. If that is tried, we can expect excuses like the atheists’ negative energy affecting the intervention by their gods, etc. Here again, care should be taken to search all belongings, and access should be totally denied to all suspected of helping them, and so on. Any takers?